Category: movie

Watched this awesome movie last week at the university with friends. I was kind of disappointed to hear that Eagle vs Shark was a romantic comedy, but after I have seen it, I loved it. I am not going to write on it, just see the trailer here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xVMkqaOUS0]

I have two things to say.
One… I’m leaving tomorrow.
Two… That could change.

Last week, I and two friends went to watch Beowulf (2007) to see a recent example of digital cinema. Other friends, who saw the movie earlier said that it sucked. I thought the opposite.

I admit that this movie is not for those who like a real camera than one that can move freely in the rendered environment. Until you get used to it, the movie resembles a computer game, which most people would prefer flesh and blood actors (an image is an image, and both are projected images, should not really matter). However, I don’t really think this movie would work in 2.5D (real shooting plus CGI), as it would just be too artificial. This way, the movie is a lot more immersive in my opinion.

Anyway, I think this is a marvellous adaptation of a primary epic – an epic that is based on oral tradition. And the movie maintains these features of oral tradition, where storytelling is important. I really loved how they maintained the heroic ideal – the way Beowulf introduces and defines himself to others. Other than one or two things done for cheap laughs (bah), I think the movie was flawless.

This movie itself is another telling of the story of Beowulf (and Beowulf the epic). How awesome.

If you know me or checked the blog a little to see the earlier posts on movies you must have recognized I’m into horror movies. But I don’t have much expectation from these movies as it’s just “more blood, more fun” principle. There are great examples of movies in this genre too for sure such as Dellamorte Dellamore.
So, anyway… I went to see 30 Days of Night last night. I didn’t have much expectations actually – as most people who vote for these new movies on IMDB or any other site are usually people, who like blockbusters etc. But for this movie, there were two sides: those who say “omg this movie rocks” and others “damn, this is sh*t!” So I thought this was another stupid horror movie with lots of shock sound effects and scenes. But it turned out to be the opposite – well, of course there were a couple of those.

This is a typical vampire movie with a few changes. The first thing I noticed was that the movie focuses quite a lot on the vampires themselves. For sure, these are not zombies, who are brainless, nor these are female seductive vampires. In short, in this kind of a movie, you don’t expect this much focus on the vampires, and I think what makes this movie good is that we see vampires talk among themselves (yes, they have a language!), pose their own ideas and communicate with the human species. This is probably because the vampire leader is a well-known actor – Danny Huston. Another note about him is, I was watching the movie with my girlfriend and she literally found him attractive. Well, and I found the woman vampire leader pretty attractive – but that’s me and my bizarre taste. This is interesting as well – while watching vampire movies, who have kinda deformed bodies covered with blood, how many times do you end up finding them sexy? Anyway, Here’s the trailer of the movie:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov1wlc0zGMQ]

Another thing is, we don’t have the typical vampires with fangs and all that. As I hinted earlier, we got a pretty socialized group of vampires – and they are careful with birthcontrol as well. They don’t want everyone to turn into vampires and they just kill them. And yes! There is plenty of gore in the movie and this movie does its job in scaring you.

As for the story, I thought some parts were pretty cliché apart from the ending: We still got this poetic justice: polygamic sex-crazed youth dies quick, those who are not good to their families die as well, and only true heterosexual etc etc love and solidarity wins. The visual aspects too: We don’t have this mock dark atmosphere as it is in the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which supposedly makes that movie scary.

But I better not be unfair to 30 Days of Night. Though it is a mainstream horror movie, 30 Days of Night will probably gain cult status in the future with its slow action and nice development of story – just like Near Dark.

I read this in a newspaper a few days ago. According to the news (in Turkish), the filmmakers of the new Turkish horror movie Musallat asked for permission (the regular writing/payment thing) for their film poster to appear at bus stops and billboards in Istanbul. The reply they got was that the nude guy on the poster had sexual connotations and he had to wear something, so they made a censored version

Later news says that it was a joke (again in Turkish) done by some people at the billboard advertising company. If so, then where did those quotes in the news from the transportation section of the municipality come from? I don’t know whether this actually happened, whether the officials had to claim the opposite due to publicity of this news, or whether this was part of marketing the movie.

Interesting thing is that this is a typical patriarchal reaction to the viewing of the male body. Or, rather a fear of eroticization of the male body. After all, according to this male-dominated ideology, man is the looker and women is the looked-at, and you need to separate and maintain these borders.

The filmmakers must have internalized this fact a great deal since the language they use in the news only shows some surprise and not much else – as if they are saying “yeah, you are right.”